


Familiar Hand

by scioscribe



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Bittersweet, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-13 17:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21191534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Bill unpacks Mike's books and makes a surprising discovery.





	Familiar Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).

“You brought this on yourself, you know,” Mike said.

Bill was wiping sweat off his forehead, but he paused to glare, the back of his hand still up against his forehead like he was pretending to swoon. At least it blocked the sun. “Because I said I’d help you move in?”

“Because you asked me to move in with you in the first place. It doesn’t count anymore as helping somebody move if you’re the one they’re moving to. Next time, maybe you’ll think twice before you fall in love with somebody who’s lived their whole life in one spot. You know how much furniture and shit you can accumulate when you never have to move?”

“I’m starting to get the idea, yeah.” He leaned back against the doorframe and looked inside at the collapsed Tetris jumble of boxes spread out all over his—their—living room. He felt a slow, reluctant smile spread across his face. “At least half of those are books, right? I should call my publishers and let them know who’s been singlehandedly keeping the industry alive.”

Mike leaned forward and kissed him. They hadn’t gotten to the point where any of their kisses felt casual or even comfortable; every one of them had a kind of restless intensity that always made Bill want to drop everything and fuck him up against the wall.

“Just two boxes left,” Mike said. “I’ll get them. You go take a shower.”

“I know I could use one, but so could you. And you’re the one who was stuck on a plane all day. I’ll finish up down here.”

It took a little more persuasion than that, but Bill finally got him to go upstairs and start settling in via a bar of Irish Spring and about thirty different water pressure settings; Mike shouldn’t have had to wash off Derry, considering he’d spent the last few months on the road, but Bill was guessing Mike still felt it on him anyway, a kind of chill buried deep under his skin. A little hot water wouldn’t solve anything—it sure as hell didn’t keep Bill’s own nightmares away—but it could sometimes help.

He lugged in the last few boxes—three, not two, as it turned out, so he felt extra-virtuous—and then stood there in the junked-up living room, listening to the quiet and the white noise of the shower. Living with Mike Hanlon, after all these years. Goddamn. He rubbed at his eyes. He needed to call Bev and Ben and Richie soon and get them all out here, christen the place with a Losers Club dinner.

He went ahead and started unpacking, settling for just unboxing the books rather than shelving them; he couldn’t remember enough about Mike’s place to say whether Mike had alphabetized them or anything.

_We had other things going on_, he thought wryly.

He lifted the next book free of its box and knew what it was before he even saw the cover. He recognized the weight of it and the way the curved spine sat in his hand. They’d done that godawful matte jacket for this one and every copy had smudged like hell.

_Black Rapids_, by Bill Denbrough.

Another one with a bad ending, probably, but he’d liked its sense of mordant humor. It was one of his earliest books, the writing so rough and green in places that the pages should have been bled pine sap. Most people didn’t list it as a favorite, and he was oddly touched Mike had bothered to drag it cross-country when he must have known Bill would already have more copies than he could possibly use.

His hands moved almost of their own accord, flipping the book open idly; he looked at the author photo on the back jacket, shuddered at his short-lived buzzcut, and then checked the front, trying to remember what buzzwords marketing had pulled out for this one.

Bill stared down at the title page.

_To Mike Hanlon—_  
_Always good to see an old friend and give him nightmares!_  
_ \--Bill Denbrough_

He recognized his own writing. _Black Rapids_ had been early enough that he hadn’t yet evolved the careless, effort-saving scrawl that made his autographs barely legible; here he could still see the strain his third-grade teacher had taken in beating a formal, Palmer Method style into their heads. He wondered if he’d really signed them all like that or if Mike’s had been an exception, if seeing Mike—even seeing him and not really remembering him, not really knowing him—had unearthed those precise, rounded letters from out of his past.

He’d signed this. Undoubtedly.

He just didn’t remember it.

He was still standing there, looking at the book, when Mike came down with, shirtless, a towel around his shoulders.

Bill looked up, lifting the book enough for Mike to see which one it was.

So much for getting Mike to relax. The grave look, the Derry look, came back. Always with the same slight ruefulness to it, like all Mike could do with it at this point was shrug and say, What can you do?

“It was years ago, Bill. You gave a speech for the New England Library Association.”

“I remember that,” Bill said, because he did: bad catered lobster rolls where the buns had all gotten soggy, a speech he’d barely been able to deliver through the migraine he’d had, the way he kept thinking he shouldn’t have come back. He’d thought, _Too close, way too close_, and he hadn’t asked himself, _Too close to what?_ “I remember giving a pretty bad speech, but I don’t remember you.”

“I didn’t figure you would. You didn’t then, either—I said who I was, you know, Mike Hanlon from Derry, and you got this look like you knew there was something on the tip of your tongue. But you didn’t come up with it. Then I guess you just faked it.”

Bill managed a thin smile. “How’d I do?”

“Not bad. You flirted with me a little.”

Given the headache he'd had at the time, that was pretty incredible. At least his dick had known what it was doing.

“Anyway," Mike said, "it was better than your speech.”

“Ouch.” He put the book on one of the empty shelves, turning it so the cover was face-down. His younger self stared up at him from the back. He forgot if he’d had that haircut when he’d gone to the NELA meeting, but in terms of the shit-ton of things he’d forgotten in his life, that felt pretty minor. “God, Mike. I never meant to leave you all alone like that. None of us did. When we moved, when I was a kid, I didn’t think—” _I didn’t think I’d forget_, he almost said, but was that even true? Stan and Richie had both left by then, and Bill had already noticed the way the phone calls and letters from them had gotten few and far between. Maybe he’d thought about it after all. Maybe he’d wanted it.

But he hadn’t wanted to leave Mike behind. He would have come back, if he’d known. He was almost sure of it.

“I wish I’d remembered,” he said simply. “We lost a lot of time, Mike. And I’m sorry you were alone.”

No wonder they couldn’t go to bed with each other yet without fucking like their lives depended on it, like every bruise and red mark of a hard kiss would be evidence. Like it would help him remember.

Mike shook his head. “We were all alone. Maybe Stan was the happiest one out of all of us, and I’m glad for that, but how much do you think he told his wife? Even about the nightmares? How much did you ever tell anybody?”

“Nothing.” No lover, no therapist—not that he’d ever stayed in therapy for longer than a session or two. He’d always been too damn scared that if he started talking, he’d never be able to stop. Some part of him had known that the wrong question would lead to answers he didn’t want to unearth. He knew what Mike meant—it hadn’t been paradise, no matter how many fucking talk show interviews he’d done. His whole life had been lived on the thin ice on a dark and bottomless lake.

Sure, Pennywise had fucked them all over. But at least he hadn’t been in fucking Derry. And at least he hadn’t shaken hands with someone he loved and seen no recognition at all in their eyes.

“I’ve spent a long time digging through the past,” Mike said. “I’m sick of it.” He stood the book up and started sliding in other next to it, slotting them into place hard enough that the sound was like him closing door after door after door.

“The future,” Bill said. He took a deep breath. “You smell good.”

Mike’s face softened. “Glad you think so, since I smell like you.”

“I’ve got good taste.” He tugged lightly at the towel around Mike’s shoulders, shaking a little more of that warm, soap-and-water scent out of it, and then he rested his hand underneath it, against Mike’s bare skin. The inscription he’d leave would be a lot simpler now, he thought, and he traced it there.


End file.
